Organizations such as on-line retailers, Internet service providers, search providers, financial institutions, universities, and other computing-intensive organizations often conduct computer operations from large scale computing facilities. Such computing facilities house and accommodate a large amount of server, network, and computer equipment to process, store, and exchange data as needed to carry out an organization's operations. Typically, a computer room of a computing facility includes many server racks. Each server rack, in turn, includes many servers and associated computer equipment.
Computer systems typically include a number of components that generate waste heat. Such components include printed circuit boards, mass storage devices, power supplies, and processors. For example, some computing devices with multiple processors may generate 250 watts of waste heat. Some known computing systems include a plurality of such larger, multiple-processor computing devices that are configured into rack-mounted components, and then are subsequently positioned within a server rack. Some known server racks include 40 such rack-mounted components and such server rack systems will therefore generate as much as 10 kilowatts of waste heat. Moreover, some known data centers include a plurality of such server rack systems.
Some known data centers include methods and apparatus that facilitate waste heat removal from server rack systems. In some data centers, server airflow leakage significantly reduces efficiency of cooling systems. According to some studies, for example, servers can leak cold air into the hot air stream at a rate of 23%-135% of their designed flow rate. Some containment systems will leak air and cause mixing due to height variations between racks at the top of containment systems and will leak air when exposed to differential static pressures over the area of the containment systems.
Also, the amount of computing capacity needed for any given data center may change rapidly as business needs change. Initially providing computing capacity in a data center, re-configuring an existing capacity of a data center, or expanding an existing capacity of a data center (in the form of additional servers, for example), as well as cooling air for such additional capacity, is resource-intensive and may take many months to effect. Moreover, traditional arrangements of servers mounted in server racks may be complicated to reconfigure to meet changing business needs. For example, increasing a compute or storage capacity of a traditional server may require physically removing the server and re-engineering the server to include more compute or storage capacity. Often costs of re-engineering traditional servers may exceed costs of replacing the traditional servers with new servers having the desired capacities. Also, in traditional servers a group of multiple computing devices mounted in a common chassis may be rendered inoperative due to a failure of an individual one of the group of computing devices mounted in the common chassis despite other ones of the group of computing devices mounted in the common chassis not being failed. Thus a failure of a single component may render a group of non-failed computing devices mounted in a common chassis inoperative and reduce overall computing capacity of a facility.
While the invention is susceptible to various modifications and alternative forms, specific embodiments thereof are shown by way of example in the drawings and will herein be described in detail. It should be understood, however, that the drawings and detailed description thereto are not intended to limit the invention to the particular form disclosed, but on the contrary, the intention is to cover all modifications, equivalents and alternatives falling within the spirit and scope of the present invention as defined by the appended claims. The headings used herein are for organizational purposes only and are not meant to be used to limit the scope of the description or the claims. As used throughout this application, the word “may” is used in a permissive sense (i.e., meaning having the potential to), rather than the mandatory sense (i.e., meaning must). Similarly, the words “include,” “including,” and “includes” mean including, but not limited to.